


Instant Recall

by sans_patronymic



Category: Dragon Ball
Genre: Child Soldiers, Do people still use the term 'Whump'?, Frieza Force - Freeform, Gen, Military Backstory, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Raditz and Nappa are Found Family, Someone help Trunks with his homework, Tags Are Hard, Whump
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-05
Updated: 2019-09-05
Packaged: 2020-10-06 19:02:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,318
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20511950
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sans_patronymic/pseuds/sans_patronymic
Summary: “Tell me a memory you have from when you were my age. I need it for my homework.”--At ten years old, Vegeta gets a promotion that isn't all it's cracked up to be.





	Instant Recall

**Author's Note:**

> Minor Canon-Divergence: Here, Frieza delays telling Vegeta about his father's death for several years, because he's a dramatic, petty bitch and he thought it'd be funnier that way.

The announcement came unexpectedly, just a few days shy of his tenth birthday. Vegeta was in the mess hall, eating his afternoon meal, listening half-heartedly as Nappa berated Raditz's sloppy footwork for, approximately, the one millionth time. They had just returned from an eight-month series of successful, albeit unimportant, missions, and Vegeta already felt the malaise of shore leave settling in. 

Nappa was halfway through one of his ‘I was culling planets before you were born’ speeches, when the entire hall suddenly fell silent. Vegeta lifted his head from his plate to see Zarbon striding towards them. He stood, reflexively, along with the rest of the soldiers around him as the verdant general approached their table.

“I ought to have known I’d find you animals at the trough,” Zarbon said to the Saiyans, his nose scrunching in displeasure.

Nappa gripped the table’s edge with enough force to dent the steel. “What of it? We’re allowed to eat, aren’t we?”

“Temper, temper,” Zarbon warned with the wave of a perfectly manicured finger. “Forgive me for interrupting your, no doubt, _very_ important dinner conversation, but I bring a message from Lord Frieza. He’s quite pleased with your work. You’re being promoted to officer, effective immediately.”

“Finally!” Raditz exclaimed.

Nappa simply smirked. “‘Bout time we got some recognition around here.”

“Oh, no. Not you. The officership applies only to Vegeta. His lordship was quite clear on that point. Now then, come with me, princeling, I’m to take you to your new quarters straight away. Don’t worry about finishing your meal; I believe you’ll find the food in the officers’ club much more appetizing than this infantry gruel.”

There was no opportunity for discussion or goodbyes. Zarbon led the boy away, his hand clamped firmly on Vegeta’s shoulder. As they walked, Vegeta could feel the eyes of every grunt in the mess hall upon him. He smiled knowing he would no longer be one of them; for the first time since he’d left Vegeta-sei, he would be an elite. Vegeta walked on, head a little higher. When he heard Raditz call his name, he didn’t bother to look back.

Vegeta’s pride in his promotion lasted for all of two weeks. The food _was_ better, his bed was softer, and he was privy to the type of strategic operations planning that really interested him. At ten years old, Vegeta was the youngest officer in the Frieza Force by more than a decade. That felt right. He was special. Gifted. Unique. It was gratifying to think Frieza felt the same.

Only too late did he realize being an officer had one glaring, critical side effect: it separated the young prince from his compatriots completely. Officers were housed, fed, and trained in a different facility from the rest of the PTO. Communication across the base was limited to official business and closely monitored. Two weeks became two months, became four. In all that time, Vegeta had neither see nor spoken to Nappa or Raditz. For all he knew, they might be dead. The isolation was beginning to wear on him.

It didn’t help that his fellow officers seemed to harbor a particular disdain for the prince that stretched far beyond the usual militaristic ribbing. Vegeta continually found himself the butt of jokes or the focus of abuse. The last to hear about important announcements, the first to be volunteered for the very worst jobs.  


Finally, the day came when Vegeta could not suffer one more contemptuous word, could not tolerate being passed over for the umpteenth time in favor of someone who surpassed him only in age, but neither in strength nor smarts. In the middle of a briefing, the boy had stood, uncalled upon, and informed Captain Ginyu precisely what he thought of the horned officer’s latest strategy.

His criticism was not well-received.  


That he made it out of the room alive was nothing short of a miracle. That he lived through the night was even more miraculous._ It doesn’t matter how good you are, if you’re sufficiently outnumbered_, Nappa had once told him. To say that the Ginyu Force outnumbered him was a laughable understatement.

He managed to give them the slip around midnight, stuffing himself between the exhaust vents of a ship in the transport bay. That was one advantage to being small, it was easier to hide. There was no way to be both concealed and comfortable, but the fumes from the fuel tank took the edge off enough to make sleep possible, even with bolts pressing into his spine.  


When morning arrived, he awoke with a start to the rumble of the rocket engine. Vegeta crawled his way back out of his hiding place, dropping onto the concrete floor of the launch pad with a grunt. He stood, dusting the grime from his uniform and stretched his aching muscles. Something in his back gave an audible crack.  


“Hey, you!” someone shouted. An engine mechanic waved a greasy hand at him from afar. “You wanna be burnt to a crisp? Get out of the way!”

Vegeta paid him no mind, sauntering clear of the rocket blast as if he hadn’t almost been toasted.

The atmosphere in the officers’ club was noticeably tense. Instead of the usually boisterous breakfast chatter, the soldiers were murmuring quietly to one another, hunched down low over their plates. Some of them began to snicker as they recognized Vegeta. The prince held his head high, ignoring their stares. He was too hungry to care if he looked as awful as he felt. And too tired to realize that someone was behind him, until a hand gripped the back of his collar and hoisted him off his feet. 

“Dammit—Put me down!” he shouted, arms and legs flailing at his unseen assailant. “Let go, you coward!”  


The other officers erupted into laughter. Slowly, Vegeta was turned and brought nose-to-nose with General Dodoria’s spiky, pink visage. His fat, purple lips spread wide in a sneer.

“There you are, you miserable little runt! Lord Frieza’s been looking for you.”  


Vegeta paled. So Ginyu had gone sniveling to Frieza. This was bad—no, more than bad—on a scale from ‘bad’ to ‘death sentence’, Vegeta was several notches closer to ‘death sentence’ than he wished to be.  


Dodoria tucked the boy under his arm like a parcel and marched out of the mess hall. No one spoke, but Vegeta could see from the looks on the other officers’ faces it would be a long time before he lived down this humiliation. He was carried through the corridor, to the left, then left again, doors opening and closing with a whoosh as they went, until they reached their destination.

At this early hour, the assembly room was bleak and empty, illuminated only by the most essential of work lights. The large console at the center, which ordinarily projected holograms of target planets, or statistical information, sat dark, unused. At the head of the room, Ginyu posed ridiculously against the Frieza Force emblem emblazoned on the wall. Beside him, perched in his hover chair with a deceptive delicacy, was Frieza. 

Dodoria set the Saiyan on his feet and gave him a shove forward. “I have found him, my lord.”

“Thank you, General. Efficient as always. Come here, child,” Frieza beckoned with the quirking of a finger.  


A few short, hesitating steps brought Vegeta close enough to the tyrant to send fear shooting through his body like fireworks. Projected confidence, he reminded himself, that was the key. Vegeta lifted his chin, hoping to look steady and calm while his insides were busy tying themselves in knots. He folded his arms across his chest to disguise his shaking hands.   


“Vegeta, how pleasant to see you. And how surprising. Captain Ginyu had led me to believe you were missing.”  


He shrugged. “Here I am.”  


“Yes. Here you _are_,” Frieza said with an amused tone, “But where have you _been?_ Security reports indicate you did not return to your quarters last night.”

“I was in the transport bay, my lord.”

“The transport bay? An unusual choice. Tell me, do you have my permission to leave this base?”  


“No, my lord.”  


“Then what, pray tell, were you doing in the transport bay for...” he reviewed the report with the press of a button, “six and a half hours?”  


“Nothing of consequence.”

“Do not attempt to deceive me, child.”

“I assure you I was here all night, my lord. If the Ginyu Force had difficulty locating me, perhaps it speaks to some general incompetence in their method of searching.”  


The veins on Ginyu’s head throbbed and pulsed.

“Perhaps,” said Frieza, “but if I find out you’ve left this facility against my orders, you will sorely regret it. Do I make myself clear?”

“Yes.”

“Yes, _what?_”

“Yes, my Lord Frieza,” Vegeta said, the words like bile in his mouth.   


“Very good. Now then, Captain, will you kindly explain what my little monkey prince has done to justify such an expensive and distracting search?”  


“This impudent welp had the audacity to criticize my operation plans for the capture of Planet Augstra, in front of the entire officers’ assembly. Further more, he suggested that _he_ was more fit to command than I am.”  


Frieza’s painted lips curled with the hint of a smile. “Did he really?”

“Yes, my lord. I believe his exact words were his ‘grandmother could complete the mission in less time’.”

“Is that so?” Frieza turned to the boy. The look in his eyes made Vegeta’s tail bristle. “How amusing. Still, if he is so hungry for responsibility, then I think it is best that he have it.”

“M-my lord?” asked Ginyu.

“What is your time table for this mission, Captain?”

“I estimate it should take three of my men thirty-six hours, plus twelve days for transportation, total.”  


“A full thirty-six hours? My, you are slipping, Captain. No wonder a child thinks he could do better. Vegeta, I am turning over command of this mission to you. Is that satisfactory?”  


“Yes, my lord,” Vegeta answered with a smirk, amazed at his own luck. “May I be permitted to select my own troops?”

“Troops?” Frieza chuckled coldly. “I thought you monkeys were capable of tackling a planet on your own—by the age of three, no less. No, you shall do splendidly all by yourself.”

Vegeta’s heart sank. He had never been on a mission alone before, never killed alone. He had never even been off-base without Nappa at his side. Suddenly, he felt very small in comparison to an entire planet.  


“You seem depressed, my boy. Could it be you miss your little friends?” Frieza asked with a sneer. “I’ll make you a deal: if you complete this mission on time, I will arrange for the three of you to be reunited. If you fail...” 

The reptilian lord merely pursed his lips and shrugged.  


“I will not fail, my lord,” Vegeta said. 

“No. Of course not. Then I shall see you back here in... let’s say... three hundred hours.”  


“Three hundred hours?” Vegeta asked, his face contorting in disbelief. Six days there, six days back, that left just twelve hours to depopulate the planet. Single-handedly. “But—“  


“Is there something wrong?”

“That’s impossible.”

”Is it? If that’s the case, perhaps you’d like to apologize and return command to Captain Ginyu. I’m sure the captain can think of a fitting punishment for your insubordination.”  


“With pleasure, Lord Frieza.” Ginyu’s sneer promised it would be something worth remembering.  


Vegeta stood for a moment, debating. He could repent and hand himself over to Ginyu in disgrace, or attempt the impossible and face whatever consequences Frieza saw fit when, inevitably, he failed. Not very attractive possibilities. 

Of course, if he accepted the mission, there was the chance he might succeed. A microscopically slim, mathematically insignificant chance, but a chance. And if he did, then he could see Raditz and Nappa, might even be permitted to live with them again. If he succeeded, he could rip that smirk of Ginyu’s face and stuff it down his throat. Vegeta squared his shoulders, drawing himself up to the fullest of his meager height. 

“I will not fail, my lord,” he repeated.  


Frieza’s laugh was like stepping on broken glass. He inched his hover chair closer to the Saiyan, his tail slithering out to caress the boy’s throat lovingly. Vegeta tried not to show how much Frieza’s touch made his skin crawl.  


“See that you don’t, Vegeta. I should hate to have to tell your father that his son proved to be a disappointment.”

Frieza smiled, terrible and ugly. Something in that smile enraged him, something Vegeta couldn’t quite put his finger on—as if Frieza knew something he didn’t. He clenched his fists. Frieza’s tail coiled around his throat, its grip tight.

“Now, you had better run along, child. Your three hundred hours have already begun.”

“Y-yes, my lord,” Vegeta managed to say through the pressure on his larynx.

Frieza released him. With the wave of a hand, he was dismissed. Vegeta bowed as shallowly as he dared and hurried out of the room. He wasted no time getting to his space pod; if there was anything not already on board, he would have to do without it. 

Clearing a planet of three billion people in twelve hours. That was seventy thousand lives per second. Fourteen and a half microseconds per person. Vegeta took a breath, input the coordinates, and blasted off.

“Hey, I think he’s waking up.”

Consciousness slid back into Vegeta’s mind in bits and pieces. A voice. Familiar. A body—he had one of those. He moved one hand, then the other. Slowly, his senses reassembled themselves.

“You look like hell, man.”  


That voice. Raditz—it was Raditz. Vegeta lifted his head and winced. The right side of his face pulsed with pain. He brought a hand up and felt the swollen flesh around his eye socket.

“You can thank Nappa for that,” Raditz said, “He sucker-punched you when they dragged your ass in here.”

“Hmph, serves you right for abandoning your own kind,” grumbled Nappa.  


It was good to hear their voices again. 

“I _would_ have to be unconscious for you to land a blow on me, old man,” Vegeta croaked with a smile.  


Fingers were poking the tender side of his face with enough force to make him grit his teeth. Groggily, Vegeta opened one eye and saw Raditz leaning over him. And there, past Raditz’s shoulder, was Nappa, trying not to look guilty and failing spectacularly. If hearing them was good, seeing them was better.

“Don’t think anything’s broken,” Raditz determined, “We’ll take you to med bay in the morning and make sure. Pretty good-sized shiner, though. Does it hurt?”

“Hmph, not a bit.”

“Good to know they didn’t change you much in the officers’ club—you’re still a lying sack of shit.” Raditz stepped away from Vegeta’s bedside, done with playing nurse.

Vegeta tried to laugh, but his body was too tired. He took a deep breath, the metallic smell of the regeneration tank still clinging to the inside of his nostrils. How had he gotten here? The last thing he could remember was a white hot pain, like ten thousand needles searing through his flesh. Frieza, with his face set in the most fastidious expression of disappointment, chiding him for his tardiness.

“Is it true what they’re saying? That you purged a second-class planet on your own in thirty-six hours?” asked Raditz. 

“Thirty-five and a quarter,” Vegeta corrected. 

The fact he’d managed to stay under the original timeline was probably the only reason he was still alive.

“Well, I’ll be,” Nappa smirked. “That’s impressive, kid.”  


“I don’t know how you did that and still managed to piss off his royal scaliness,” said Raditz.

“It’s just a mindfuck,” Nappa explained. He took a seat on the edge of the mattress, the bedsprings groaning in protest at his weight. “Remember this, Vegeta, it doesn’t pay to be a sycophant to Frieza. Whatever you do, however powerful you become, you’ll always fail. He’ll make sure of that. That’s why we need to stick together.”

Nappa had a point. The promotion had been a punishment disguised as a reward. Now, he had been demoted, reprimanded, made to suffer for his incompetence, and yet, here he was, precisely where he wanted to be. There was no winning against backwards logic like that.

“Besides, I was getting bored of being in charge. Much rather follow your orders and that way you can take the blame when this hairy idiot fucks things up for us,” Nappa said, jerking his thumb in Raditz’s direction.  


“Hey—that last one was on you,” Raditz insisted. “How’m I supposed to know which pole’s North and which pole’s South on a planet I’ve never been on before?”

“You’re supposed to read the briefing before you get there, you dumbass.” Nappa glanced down at Vegeta and frowned. “Your Highness? Are you all right?”

Damn, it was good to see them again. Overwhelmingly good. Vegeta’s body shook, though whether it was with laughter or sobs, he couldn’t be sure. Both, neither. He was happy to be back, and, at the same time, all the miserable loneliness of the last few months hit him like a meteor strike. Gradually, he became aware of Nappa’s broad hand stroking his hair.

“You got this, kid,” he was saying, “You’ll be all right. Just breathe. C’mon, inhale. Exhale. That’s it. Keep going.”

A few more breaths and Vegeta’s emotions subsided. When Nappa drew his hand away, Vegeta didn’t have the strength to protest. He was tired, terribly tired, unable to keep his eyes open any longer.

“Now, get some rest. We’ll wake you when it’s chow time,” Nappa said and with that, Vegeta let himself slip into much-needed sleep.

_“Dad. Dad! You’re not even listening to me,” Trunks says, his voice tinged with aggravation._

_Vegeta comes back down to Earth with a blink. “What was your question?”_

_“Tell me a memory you have from when you were my age. I need it for my homework.”  
_

_“I don’t have time for this. Go ask your mother.”  
_

_“I already did!” Frustration is etched into Trunks’s forehead. “I have to ask _both_ of you. That’s the assignment. Just tell me something you did when you were ten, please? Mom says I can’t watch TV until this is done.”_

_A memory from when he was ten years old. What else happened that year? That might have been when he and Raditz were obsessed with building cairns out of skulls. What else? The first time he killed someone whose name he knew. Getting drunk in some wayside space port. Learning to take a knee to the groin without flinching. Those are the better moments._

_Vegeta looks at his son. Could Trunks have done all those things by now? Almost certainly. He’s strong—stronger by far than Vegeta had been at this age. Maybe he could have even cleared Augstra in twelve hours. But not without losing that gentleness, that warmth about him that is one hundred percent Bulma. No, Vegeta doesn’t wish a single one of his memories on Trunks._

_“Dad, come _on!”_  
_

_“I don’t care. Just make something up.”  
_

_“Ugh, you’re never _any_ help at _all_. Where are you going?”_

_“To take a nap. Your stupid question gave me a headache.” _

_Even as he says this, Vegeta knows he’ll have to apologize for it later. He can’t stop himself from getting up and walking away, from trying to escape the disappointment on his son’s face. It doesn’t matter how much Trunks pouts or rages, Vegeta’s mind keeps dragging him back thirty-odd years and suddenly, he is as tired as he was that day he returned from Augstra a failure. When he is almost out of the room, he turns and adds, as if by rote:_

_“Wake me when it’s chow time.”_


End file.
